re: Did your old man regularly go out at night when you were a kid?

Dad never went out alone at night. Was in sales and would do some sales dinners and such here and there. But my mom normally went to those.

I never go out on my own. Have no desire to. Too tired to honestly lol. When we do get with friends wife is included because my social group is all my friends from college still (all live in ATL area) and all wives are friends. Or our other group is the social group we have formed through my kids baseball. And that includes wives as well.

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Specifically to bars or other social drinking type things, alone not with spouse.

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frick NO - my mom would have lit his arse up and had all the church men over to talk to him

We were Baptists and went to church 3 x a week

Nope. He was gone a lot though working land jobs as a cement operator. He got his partying out before he married my mom.

My dad very rarely went out. Every now and then he would go to a friend's house, or maybe a bar to watch a game. But that's it. I never even saw him drink until I out of high school. I still don't know if he did that great of a job hiding him drinking from me, or if he just stayed sober my entire childhood.

I go out occasionally. Definitely not every week, or even every month. The wife and I go out twice a month usually. I'll meet up with the boys and get shitcanned maybe once every 2-3 months. I also don't have kids yet.

My dad travelled for work a lot; there were weeks, and sometimes months, at a time that I wouldn't see him. But when he was home, he'd almost never go out on his own, day or night.

Never went anywhere without my mom. They were in a bowling league on Monday nights and sqaure danced every Thursday night. They have been together for 56 yrs now.

Father:

My dad would come home in the evening and have a drink with supper when I was very young.

As I got older he sometimes came in later, having gone to the bars right after getting off work.

As I got even older he started doing this more. Sometimes he would use the excuse of having to go to Mer Rouge or Tallulah to get parts for a tractor, planter, etc. (he was a farmer)

By my teens he had started going home around 2pm, sleeping for an hour or two, then leaving a bit before I got in from school at 4:30 (mom got in around 5). He would leave from his nap, check on the farm hands, then head to the bar where he would stay til 8 or 9.

As all of this increased over the years, so too did the friction between my parents.

After his second DUI within 3 months my mother had him forcibly committed to an alcohol rehab facility before his second DUI went to trial (for which he would eventually serve 6 months in jail). My 18th birthday was spent visiting him at the rehab facility.

He refused to see my mother during that entire time. When he got out he never returned home. Eventually he went into construction work and back to drinking.

At first he would call once a month to see how we were doing, then every six months, then every birthday or holiday, then just birthdays and then... no more.

When he first left us he left my mother holding the bag on over $1M in debt. At one point (and this was the late 80's) he had written well over $1k in checks in bars alone (he enjoyed buying everyone a round of drinks).

We were eventually notified by the wife of one of his former construction co-workers that he was in a coma in a hospital in Pine Bluff, AR. This was a shock to me as I always figured the next thing we would hear about him would be that he was found dead in a ditch beside some shithole bar.

His coma was, of course, due to his alcoholism. He drank so much over the years that it impacted his mental functions. At the end he stopped eating food, except for Jello (per the Meals On Wheels guy, who was also the one who found him passed out) so his final diet was booze, smokes and Jello.

I was sitting there with him when he died a sad and ugly death.


Me:

Because of my father's example I always watched myself when drinking. Yes I would get shitfaced drunk but I rarely did that more than once a month, as time went on that grew to 6 months and then longer. I grew out of that around my mid-30's.

Today I rarely drink and my nights are almost all spent at home with my wife and I couldn't be more happy and content.

My pops never went out, he wasn’t much of a drinker in general. As far as my wife and I, I work shift work so occasionally when i’m prepping for night shift i’ll go out with the fellas for some beers, but it’s not something that happens regularly. My wife and her friends go out occasionally also to get away from the kids and husbands…. i honestly have no issues with it. If i spent all my time worried about what my wife was doing when i wasn’t around, i wouldn’t be able to do my job so i don’t sweat it.

On three occasions, dad left home and didn't come back for 9 months. He went to Vietnam on three tours.

Damn. Great sharing, for lack of a better word.